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San Francisco has lost too many lives -- the highest proportion of any major U.S. city -- in and out of the arts. Moby Dick Records, an independent label with several popular disco disks in the early '80s, folded in 1984 after seven of its ten core employees died of AIDS. IN MEMORY OF THOSE WHO HAVE MARCHED ON reads a plaque at the base of the stairs leading to the offices of the San Francisco Band Foundation; it tallies twelve AIDS deaths, including that of Jon Sims, 36, the charismatic founder of the Gay Freedom Day Marching Band & Twirling Corps. Theater Rhinoceros has lost seven actors, directors and playwrights since 1984. Of the six actors in the company's production that year of C.D. Arnold's King of the Crystal Palace, four have died and one now has AIDS. "A nurse in my latest play says, 'I'm sick of all this sickness,' " Arnold notes. "Sometimes I just want to go see 18 Fred Astaire movies in a row and just forget about it."
Others manage to find strength and serenity in their affliction. Gerald lo Presti, a second tenor with the Gay Men's Chorus, was diagnosed as having AIDS in 1985. When crippling lesions spread to his vocal cords, Lo Presti had the lesions burned off and kept singing. When he could no longer sing the tenor range, he relearned all his parts in bass three weeks before the season began. Still later, he insisted on a blood transfusion that would allow him to tour with the chorus. "He practically had to be held up," recalls Perry George, a member of the chorus, "but he sang radiantly." Two months later Lo Presti was dead at 33. Now George has AIDS. "It's been -- how do I say this gracefully? -- the best thing ever to happen to the interpretive powers in my singing. When you're told you have a year and a half to live, such things as sunsets, dahlias and solo singing recitals take on a whole new meaning."
At first awful glance, Edwin Flath looks to have been consumed by AIDS. Flath, founder and musical director of the California Bach Society Choral Group, is 57 but looks 87. His body, swathed in blankets, shakes with each terrible cough. But his parchment eyelids flutter open at the thought of his music. "I'm learning a new repertoire," he says when the coughing subsides. "Schubert, Beethoven and Brahms sonatas. Life and art are inseparable -- you love it and you give it away." He rises from bed and slowly walks to his piano, sits and begins a short piece by Leos Janacek. He opens the nearest window and begins playing with more authority, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, a hand poised dramatically to flourish over the keys. His eyes open again, and now they glow like coals from beneath the white ridges of his skull. At the finish, some color has returned to his face. "There is no ego now," he says. "For the rest of my life I hope to live with grace, make the best use of my talents and share them with others. That's the greatest joy of a musician."